There are approximately 380,000 churches in the United States. Assume one-third of them would be interested in an anti-racist ministry that avoided unnecessary conflict while deepening their members’ spiritual faith and demonstrated a healing message for a society torn by racial division. Consider the impact if those 126,000 churches took seriously Jesus’ central command to love their neighbor as a central part of their ministry.
Most clergy, especially in what are called main-line churches, would personally agree that racism is contradicted by the Gospel. However, in this era when many churches are declining in membership, they, and their leadership councils, are reluctant to engage in church-wide ministries addressing volatile issues in our society without a clear strategy for how to address the issue in a way that is clearly faithful and holds promise of deepening the faith of their membership.
Consider some central faith principles that challenge the direction of the church in the twenty-first century.
- First, we affirm that God is real, the Creator of the universe, and involved in speaking through the church to effect a transforming vision of hope for humanity’s future. While racism is not the only sin that seeks to defeat God’s intentions for our world, it is clearly a prominent sin that challenges the love of God and God’s love of humanity.
- RACISM IS A SIN BUT
- GOD OFFERS GRACE TO DEFEAT IT.
What if the membership of those 126,000 churches were inspired by God’s Spirit to probe a central truth revealed in the cross. From a world’s perspective, the cross was intended to be the secular world’s response (seen in the Roman Empire) to the love of God (as seen in the person and message of Jesus Christ). What God did in response to that display of utter defiance to the love of God was to take the very symbol of that evil and transform it into a sign of hope and salvation for humanity.
Unlike the world that frequently views life from a “win/lose” perspective, God offers us the transforming power of Divine Grace, which can even turn the worst of evils into a transformative experience. The cross can liberate believers into becoming a community of Good News (the church) (Luke 4:18-19), giving witness to “ God’s Kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven.”
While recognizing that our churches are filled with ordinary human beings with multiple strengths and weaknesses and succumbing to frequent sinful behavior reflective of all humanity, it also experiences the power of the Spirit enabling the church to hear Divine words that guide it in God glorifying ways.
So, the question and challenge for us as Christians is how to listen to the Spirit working in the church, which enables the church community to speak a healing and liberating word in the context of the racist society in which we live, both in this country and around the world.
Such a strategy believes that:
- God did not make a mistake when God created the universe, enabling humanity to evolve as a result of both its wisdom and its weaknesses.
- Nor was Jesus either a poor planner or a poor recruiter when he built the church on the foundation of a set of disciples who, themselves, were ordinary humans, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
- God works through the power of Grace that can both build on our gifts and skills and transform our failed behavior to effect a redeemed world that reflects God’s Divine love,
- God works to achieve the Divine purpose from the perspective of eternity and invites believers to do the same.
Consider a strategy that guides our church membership to affirm a faith that can offer a healing witness in the face of this toxic poison of racism. As we reflect on that possibility, remember certain advantages inherent in the nature of the church that Jesus called into being. Some of those advantages are:
- We are part of an already established community whose bonds of relationship transcend most of the divisive barriers that frequently separate humans from other humans.
- We gather regularly to be addressed by Scripture, prayers, and music, and be reminded that we are part of something much larger than ourselves—God’s Divine Love.
- While we don’t always recognize or act on these Divine truths, when you review church history, you will discover multiple recognizable events where Christians willingly sacrificed their own personal benefits in acts of servanthood that ennobled humanity.
- We are now entering a period of history in which we can take advantage of the rapidly developing internet technology to connect humans across distance, culture, and politics and build on our faith community in new ways.
And before we become overwhelmed by the task before us, we are reminded of how frequently God worked through individuals and small communities to effect major transformations in the world. For us as Christians, our faith was built on an unwed pregnant teenager in a small village in a faraway colony in the midst of the mighty Roman empire.
I’ll explore a possible strategy in future blogs or if you want to read about it on your own, I offer you “God’s Transformation Through the Church.” https://a.co/d/e0w2jAt